Many consumers enjoy shopping at ‘real’ or ‘physical’ shops so that they can feel, touch and closely examine real products as well as comparing products. In addition, many physical shops have shop attendants available to provide personal services such as real time product information, product comparison, advice and comparable products to assist a customer to make purchasing decisions.
During a shopping session, shop assistants often provide customers with many articles to compare with and to choose from. In many shopping occasions, several expensive and/or delicate items such as watches, jewellery, smart phones, or ornamental items may be placed on a presentation apparatus for customer viewing, examination and selection. Such presentation apparatus in retail business is commonly referred to as customer serving trays. A customer serving tray usually includes a main receptacle which allows open access by a viewer so that a viewer can access and remove articles on the tray for examination, close viewing or appreciation before making a purchase decision. Where the items are small and portable, tracking of article movements between a customer and a shop assistant can be difficult, especially when several items are placed on a customer serving tray to promote multiple purchase.
The value or preciousness, and therefore the price, of precious and/or valuable articles are often determined by properties and characteristics associated with the articles. Such properties and characteristics may be multifaceted, time variant and time invariant, and include, for example, design, shape, grading, uniqueness or rarity, material purity, weight or size, and/or price. It would be desirous if information on those properties and characteristics can be readily available at the time when presentation of an article is required.